Paranoia

As I lay awake last night, I could hear myself in the other room, walking around, turning on lights, opening drawers, pulling apart curtains, looking for something, searching for someone. I waited for the door to burst open, for me to enter, maniacally happy to have finally found the person I was looking for, me, shivering in the night, cowering under the sheets.

Some people are deathly scared of death, others of ghosts, dogs, dustbins or snakes. I don’t need a boggart to show me what I’m scared of, a mirror will do.

I thought of locking the room, but a calm voice in my head assured me that it wouldn’t help, I was already in the room, there was no keeping me out. I was already there to talk, to taunt and to hurt.

When I’m showering I make sure I never close my eyes, I check underneath the bed and behind the curtains whenever I enter an empty room and I’ve removed the bed from my hostel room.

I know what I'm scared of, but I don't know why, maybe it's all in the head, my head.

Spent the last semester a little stir crazy. Spent half of my time wishing to fall down a rabbit hole, spent the other half trying to make that happen by doing a lot of crazy things.

New semester break, new city, new internship, new medication but same old heart break. There were a couple of posts written about learning to walk, walking out of the woods, but the truth is that I seem to be walking in circles.

The gentleman with thistle down hair

For someone who dishes it out as much as I do, I am painfully slow when it comes to detecting other peoples sarcasm, lies and general deceptions. Essentially I’m a cheerfully oblivious kinda person who accepts whatever other people tell me as the gospel truth. Like the time I was five at the republic day parade and my mom told me that the dinosaur on the float was real. I believed her, I had no reason not to, except for science and I knew nothing about it back then. Then there was the time I was in 4th Grade and our science teacher took an extra class during the computers period, and announced in unmistakably icy tones that those who were more interested in playing on the computers could get up and leave. I got up and left, I still wasn’t too fond of science and I thought she meant it.
Then there are other stories I was told as a kid, such as the one about my cousins grandma owning a little menagerie, which contained peacocks, rabbits and tiger cubs amongst other animals. It took me 15 years to doubt that story and the 7 year old in me still wants to believe that it’s true, that anamma actually owned 3 tiger cubs. Reading people has never been my forte.
I’d like to think that my 4 years in college where I have had the opportunity to observe human nature and behaviour up close has made me more adept at detecting deception. But it’s not so. When I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I believed that the footnotes were carefully researched out references to “magic” books that actually existed, until I hit the footnote which began to talk about England’s Faerie King. My science may be weak, but my history is a tad better, and the believing footnotes stopped right there.
It’s a good book, a tad confusing, but fun to read. What really drew me into the story was its antagonist, the gentleman with thistle down hair. The gentleman with thistle down hair, holds people captive in his faerie kingdom of lost-hope where he forces them to dance the nights away, while in the human world these captives withdraw into shells, drowned in misery, unable to talk about their troubles, unable to sleep, eat, or live an ordinary life.
How often have I longed to track down the gentleman with thistle down hair whose been holding me captive, and stab him to bits and pieces, which as wishes go is slightly more acceptable than wanting to stab my teachers, assorted auto drivers and occasionally myself.
Anyway there you go, caustic, unable to read and therefore relate to people, mildly to moderately depressed and with a propensity for angry violence, it’s been a long time growing up and I’m still not done. The last bout of depression was particularly bad, I’m not yet out of the woods, but I’m finally up on my feet, walking and trying to get out.

Feeling Better

I haven’t written anything in a long time. I haven’t been able to, I’ve been too busy. Busy wallowing in equal parts of self pity and self loathing. Depressed, dejected, feeling dumb and dull, I’ve lost the ability to articulate my opinions. Have a conversation. Write. Think.

I’ve spent the last couple of months eating, sleeping and sleep walking. I’ve “done” quite a bit, but none of it has registered over the persistent throbbing dull, sad feeling. The only things that come to mind are unpleasant breakdowns I’ve had, failures and dead ends I’ve hit in the past few months.

I’m being dragged through college by family and friends for a degree and the promise of something better after (just) one and half years more. I’m due to give my third repeat exam and at the rate my CGPA is dropping I wonder if I will be able to convince my college to let me out with a degree, much less convince some other college to let me in without a capitation fee.

I’ve been waiting for something to happen. Every day, every hour, every minute of my existence I pray for something to happen. Something which will come, sweep me out of this funk I’m in. But nothing happens unless you make it happen and the only things that I feel I can make happen are, to put it bluntly, not pleasant.

So instead I am going to write about what all has already happened to me, what I’m grateful for, and what some of my coping mechanisms are. It’s a little gratitude post, it’s going to tell me that all is not lost, that I still have a life worth fighting for and the means to fight that battle.

One of the most important things that has happened to me is blogging. It’s been a year since I started blogging, and words cannot express how much it means to me. Nonetheless I will make a short feeble attempt at explaining the role it’s begun to play in my life. Blogging gives me a sense of accomplishment, something that I badly need in the face of my failing academic career. I’ve been accused of TMI on my blog, but I don’t really care, being brutally honest on my blog has helped me deal with personal issues and insecurities with a sense of humour, it has helped me come to terms with a myself that I wanted to hide. It’s helped me understand that these insecurities are shared by others and that if I say it out aloud, I will have received and given empathy. Blogging is an outlet for a great deal of frustration, whenever I find myself in what would earlier have been a stressful or anger inducing situation, I now tell myself to take a step back, observe the situation with a sense detachment and humour so that I can blog about it later. And when I fail to achieve that state of detached humour, writing invariably calms me down and helps me sort out the very strong opinions and emotions I feel.

I owe blogging to my friends and sisters, hereinafter referred to as friends. I owe a lot to my friends. They read my blog, they listen to me and they love me. I doubt that anybody will find so perfect a combination of love, craziness, intelligence, individuality and spirit than what’s housed in my hostel. Often when I listen to other people talk about their friends, I find myself pitying them for not having mine. From my school days (when I would walk around alone in the lunch break, eating food continuously, trying to look busy, so that no one would notice I had no one to hang out with) to today (where I have in my room a wall painted bright red by my friends, so that as they explained to me, when I’m depressed and have locked myself into my room, I can look at the wall, and remember that I have friends, that I am a person people want to be friends with) I have come a long way. And it’s because of them. I’ve found my happily ever after.

Then there are the parents, they listen, they counsel, they support, they put up. I have faith in them. They are individualists and I know that whenever they have to make a decision regarding me, they think of what I would want, instead of what they want for me. They understand that I’m not them, that their values aren’t necessarily mine and that I will do things differently from them when the time comes.

So, I’ve written. The tears which prompted me to write this post have dried up. I’m feeling a lot better. From tomorrow, I will begin taking baby steps towards even more betterhood.

Instead of sleeping for hours and hours in my room, I will sleep in various rooms across the corridor, while the owners of the room do whatever it is that they’re doing. When you’re depressed and not in a position to talk to others, laugh with them, this is an easy way to gently ease back into a social life. I will resume jogging, I have no self-control when it comes to stimulants of any variety, food, music, alcohol. Jogging is a “safe” stimulant, but I end up abusing jogs as well. Once I’m in the routine, my body begins to yearn for the jogging high, I spend the entire day waiting for when I can go jogging, unable to do anything but look at the clock, when something threaten the jog, like rain or a dinner plan with friends, I get panicky and worked up. When I’m jogging, I find myself unable to stop until I’m exhausted. I will not let that happen. I will listen to anyone else who needs to talk. Because to know that you’re not alone, is the most important thing. I will ask for help when I need it.

(for those of you who are wondering, I started writing this post on the 9th of January. That day all that I could write before I gave up was the first line, also I have given and passed my repeat since then)

Lurid Orange Underpants

I climbed a tree in front of the Parsi Dairy. It was fun. I went for a midnight carriage ride on Marine Drive. It was also fun. We helped a stranded five year old wade out to sea. Brave little brat, came up to two complete strangers and asked to be taken to the rocks popping out of the sea. We obliged, we gave a lecture to her sisters who had left her on the shore while they enjoyed the view from the rocks. We got called Aunty. It was fun. Except for the “Aunty” part.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks sleep walking through Bombay. I’m sorry, you deserved better, maybe next time. This Sunday, Divi and I went to see “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” at the Prithvi Theatre. I put my head on her shoulder, shut my eyes and listened to the dialogue as it was mercilessly mangled by the actors on stage. It wasn’t all a bust though, while my eyes were open, Nick dropped trou and the name of my future band was born.

Get the guest. We played it last friday, or rather it was played on us, Divi Hakuna and Me. We tried playing humiliate the host, but didn’t get too far. All in all, the weekend gave me a lot to think about. I wouldn’t have thought much about the play without Friday and wouldn’t have given two hoots about Friday if it hadn’t been for the play. Do you enjoy being nasty? Do you notice it when you’re being an unpleasant prick? How do you shut up, get up and get out before someone gets hurt? When I wake up from this daze I’m in, I shall think about it.

“It was because you taught me to do things right, that I’m being forced to do them the wrong way” I’m translating and paraphrasing Rocket Singh, but you get the gist of what he and I are trying to say. The movie ultimately ends up implying that you can do things the right way and do them the right way. It becomes a tad preachy and it’s not as smooth as Chak de India, but Ranbir Kapoor’s colourful turbans and cute butt more than make up for any other flaws.

I leave you now, to look for a drummer , a bassist, (apparently if I can be the vocalist, Divi can be the Guitarist, we’re just THAT good) and a hug.

Dear Mumbai,

I first came to you, back when you were Bombay. I was three or four, maybe five, and had been sent to stay with my aunt while my mother dealt with an illness and two babies. I hated you. I hated the fishy smell, the cramped high rise apartments, having to walk up the dingy 5th and 6th storey staircase because I couldn’t reach the 7^th floor button in (on?) the lift, the barren playground with the incredibly high see-saws and most of all having to stay in a crèche while my aunt worked. I was too much of a scaredy-cat to enjoy Essel World and Fantasy Land, and I have no memory of ever having visited the beach.

The second time I visited Mumbai was on the way back from Goa with my college friends. I cried again (of course I cried the first time... I was four! Seven at the most), I silently curled up on the couch of a second class waiting room and cried. I was physically tired and emotionally exhausted from my week in Goa. The night spent travelling in the general compartment from Goa to Bombay (we didn't try booking bus tickets until an hour after the last possible minute, by which time there were no tickets available, instead we had to race to a station one hour away in 45 minutes time to catch a train for which we could get only tickets in the general compartment) had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were a bunch of spoilt rich kids refusing to shift, refusing to squeeze in, refusing to adjust in a compartment where everyone else was cooperating trying to make an uncomfortable journey slightly more bearable for everyone. If you can’t travel general, can afford not to travel by general, don’t try and travel general. It hurts the others more than it hurts you. Also, and this is harder to admit, my hair was in a horrid state, it was all frizzy and unmanageable, and looked like an afro gone wrong. I am incredibly vain and self-conscious about my hair, It was the hair that broke my back.

And so here I am in Bombay again. It still smells fishy, it’s filled with even more high rises, but I can press the 7^th floor button on any lift and that helps. I love that the autos and taxis go by the meter, and I have a crick in my neck from looking up and down at all the buildings (the fountain area reminds me of London). There’s lots more that I want to see and much that I want to begin doing. Until then I like you Bombay, I’m reserving love for when I get to know you better.

Update: My mother tells me I was five when I was packed off to Bombay. I eventually cried my way out of the crèche and accompanied my aunt to work instead, there I would sit quietly, doing heaven only knows what.